Election Swingers

In defense of random chance, at least it
has a 50/50 shot of reflecting the voter's will.

Seriously? It's come to this? We're literally choosing officials by random chance? Which given the unrepentantly preposterous system that stuck us with a gameshow host for President, I suppose we shouldn't be that shocked, but still, did you see this thing about the election for the Virginia House of Delegates-huh? House of Delegates. It's what they call their House of Representatives. I guess they think it makes them sound quaint and colonial. Also, they're not the State of Virginia, they're the Commonwealth of Virginia.

Anyway, speaking of quaint, they're going to settle this election by drawing lots. No, really. So the election for the 94th District has been kind of a goat rodeo. First it went to Republican David Yancey by just ten votes and Democrat Shelly Simmonds asked for a recount. A recount she won by one vote. Hurray, great story. But then that got reversed because of this:

If I learned anything from public school it's that
Scantron sheets would one day ruin all our lives.

Pictured: The Party of Lincoln...no,
 really, they still call themselves that.

Simonds or Yancey? In the interest of full disclosure I should mention that I'm not from Virginia and don't know anything about David E. Yancey or Shelly A. Simonds. However since the Republican party has turned into some kind of pro-Nazi, pro-statutory rape, rancidity homophobic, misogynistic caricature of itself, I'm going to go ahead and root for Simonds. That said, yeah fine, it does kind of look like the voter in question ticked Simonds and then suddenly remembered Hillary Clinton's emails and how Obama is a secret gay Muslim and then crossed it out and filled in the Yancey bubble.

So now it's a tie again and thanks to some arcane procedural rules and Virginia's adorable commitment to folksiness, they're going to write the candidates names on slips of paper, stuff them into film canisters, because of course they are, and then draw one out of a tricorn hat or something...ok, it's going to be pulled out of a bowl, but a tricorn would be way funnier. 

The drawing of lots is actually a concession to modern electoral standards.
Strictly speaking, they're supposed to immerse both candidates in water
 and see which one floats. That candidate is then to be burned as a witch. 

What? Not all judges are on the up and up.
Take noted child molester Roy Moore for
example. He was a judge. Sorry, alleged.

But here's the bullshit. A three-judge panel in charge of certifying the recount picked this ballot out of the invalid ballot stack and decided it was a vote for Yancey. But is it? That may have been the voter’s intent, but if they wanted to change their mind they should have asked for a new ballot. You don't just scribble one out and check a new box, it's confusing. I mean for all we know someone could have tampered with the ballot after the fact. That's why they throw botched ballots like this out.

Like this fancy fellow here.

Look, I know I'm biased here, but GOP, as a whole, has been acting like, what's the phrase? A pack of rabid-foam crazies who just want to watch the world burn? Or let's just say jerks. They're acting like jerks and I want to see them hoisted by their proverbial petards. What's a petard? Here, let me explain through the power of pedantry: a petard is a sort of bomb used to break open a city wall and to be hoisted by one's own petard is to have it backfire and throw you up into the air. Like a schlemiel. And I'd pay real money to watch some petard hoisting.

Back to what I was saying, sure I'm biased here, but this back and forth with ballots getting un-invalidated and elections decided by drawing a name out of a bowl, smacks of shenanigans at a time where politics are especially gross and full of shady moves, shitty deals and defeats snatched from the jaws of victory.

Congratulations Virginia, you're about to decide an election
the same way swingers in the 70's chose sex partners.